I'm curious how culture wars have impacted your work and family life. I've lived most of my life in large metro areas, so from my perspective "culture wars" are mostly people in far away towns waving fists at us city folk. The actual impact on my life is minimal.
The way that this usually effects people's personal lifes, is when there are individuals who care way to much about abstract politics, turn it into a moral cursade, and think that if you don't agree with them on every single issue then this is some huge judgment on you as a person.
Basically, it is with us or against us mentality. Even not having an opinion on some abstract idea, means that you are therefore a perpetrator of this moral wrong.
Not caring about politics is often the worst sin that you can commit to those people, no matter what other actions you have taken in your personal life regarding them or the community.
This is less common in person, and more common with individuals who have arguments with their "friends" on Facebook and the like.
Anyone who makes a post like "If you don't agree with me on X, then unfriend me, as I don't want any people like you in my life!"
"If you don't agree with me on X, then unfriend me, as I don't want any people like you in my life!"
Most of those comments I have seen are specifically related to racism. For example, an individual will state that "if you don't support Black lives, unfriend me". I fail to find fault with that. Can you explain why it is problematic for someone to want to distance themselves socially from people that are opting-in to oppose a modern civil rights movement? I would certainly do the same with anyone who opposed the right of Women to vote, or gay people to marry.
The amplification of identity through the capitalization of Black and Women is dangerous, tribal, and counterproductive in a collaborative environment. Plus, the phrase "if you don't support Black lives" is in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, a group who has led riots all throughout the country.
I'm not saying they didn't do so for a good reason. I'm saying it's not black-or-white, yet people who make such posts make it black-or-white.
Apathy and centrism are friends of evil governance everywhere.
To quote Howard Zinn (even if you disagree with his politics - it applies to both sides of the aisle): "You can't be neutral on a moving train. Events are already moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral means to accept that."
Being "above" politics is not a virtue when the politics in question are harmful - thus, the "moral crusade".
Ok, fine if hold that viewpoint, but don't gaslight us that nothing new is going on. Politics has invaded everything, and it wasn't like this even 10 years ago.
OK, then please don't play this "what culture war?", as if you have no idea what we're talking about. That's debating in bad faith. I'd not do that to you.
Honestly, I don't know what you're on about. The term "culture war" is extremely vague and with an obvious negative connotation, but as far as I can tell you're simply complaining that politics are more visible in everyday life.
Can you succinctly define what makes a "culture war", and how that is different from political debate?
Specifically, stuff like QAnon, facemask protests, BLM, trans rights, "white privilege", anthem protests, etc etc etc. There's pretty widespread recognition in the US of culture war flashpoints.
But before I engage anymore: are you American? Because we're discussing these political topics in the US context in this thread, explicitly.
I am American, which is why I was asking. I just don't understand how "culture war" is any different than "political disagreement over social issues". Why do we need a scary new term?
"Culture war" has been in active use since at least the 1990s, and probably much before.
I get that you don't like the term, but its use in this context is 100% accurate.
And it clearly is not just your side, it's the other side as well. Both of you are engaging in non-stop culture wars. And it's tiring, and dangerous for our country. You've probably not watched a country descend into civil war. I have. It happens much quicker than you'd think.
If you want to play that game, the original statement was: "Culture wars have invaded both work and family life."
I questioned whether this was really "invading" family life - that implies that across large swathes of the American population, family/home life has been meaningfully changed.
I did not question whether political discussions had increased in the public sphere, and as you mentioned, I agreed with that point of view.
I'm happy to discuss, but I don't appreciate the smug twisting of words.
You live in a large metro area where beliefs are fairly uniform. It would be understandable if you share those beliefs that you wouldn't have any disagreements, right?
And I'm not sharing with HN the details of my family and workplace discussions, sorry. But maybe someone else here will be willing to. If you don't believe me, then that's OK, that's up to you.
Edit: I mean, the media even covers the near constant revolts of activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase, and many other tech companies. Do you want me to find you some articles? Is this new to you?
"If you don't believe me, then that's OK, that's up to you."
I didn't say, suggest or imply that I didn't believe you. I stated my alternative experience and asked for more information about yours.
"the media even covers the near constant revolts of activist employees"
From what I see, those are arguments between people who believe in Thing A very strongly and want to act on it and people who also believe in Thing A but would rather not make a huge fuss about it. But the number of people who don't believe Thing A, in the extremely diverse and heavily populated areas I have lived in, are very tiny. For example, I almost never encounter people who think we should censor sex more, or ban abortion, or not fight racism or oppose police oppression, or that we should in any way oppose LGBTQ rights, or enforce religious ideology on the public sphere, etc.
Step 1: "if you don't support Black lives, unfriend me" (a sentiment you agree with, from your other comment in this thread)
Step 2: "I almost never encounter people who think we should [...] not fight racism"
You're free to exclude anyone you don't like from your friends – it's your life. But if you do this, maybe don't use the fact that your bubble doesn't have anyone who thinks differently from you as evidence of there being very few people out there who disagree with you on such things?
My so-called "bubble" includes dozens of uniquely massive metros that represent hundreds of millions of people. They drive, and historically have driven, most advances in art, culture, innovation and economic output. So it's not like I'm living in some remote backwater getting my news from obscure blogs. I'm up in the mix.
As far as the current movement that aims to of change policy and perspectives to better protect and respect Black lives, I would point out that the supporting any given civil right movement, at any time in any culture, when viewed from a few decades distance, has a nearly flawless track record. Can you name a couple historic movements that had the goal of expanding rights or ending oppression that you, today, would oppose?
> My so-called "bubble" includes dozens of uniquely massive metros that represent hundreds of millions of people.
This can also describe the entirety of hard-left twitter, which yes, definitely is a filter bubble and an echo chamber, which has nothing to do with geographic distribution, but everything to do with groupthink, high internal conformity, and not being receptive to foreign ideas.
> Can you name a couple historic movements that had the goal of expanding rights or ending oppression that you, today, would oppose?
Are you implying there would be a shortage of those? In the US:
- Gun rights as they are
- Antivax
- Pro-life movement
- Unrestricted freedom of speech
- Certain special religious rights (regarding exemptions from various taxes / rules / etc.)
- "Free markets" in specific fields like healthcare
- Largely unrestricted rights to political donations
- etc.
Each of those has many, many millions of passionate defenders. These are legitimate civil rights issues / movements, even if you disagree with them.
Something being a "civil rights movement" does not automatically make it right, even if historically that was more often the case than not.
Even communism could be described as a civil rights movement, if it won and discredited capitalism. It is described that way in countries where it won.
Both pro-life and pro-choice can be correctly described as civil rights movements – rights of the mother vs rights of the fetus. I'm not pro-life, but I am able to engage with other people's opinions without labeling them racists / bigots / etc. and excluding them from my life, because I can be wrong, and I wouldn't see it otherwise.
> So it's not like I'm living in some remote backwater getting my news from obscure blogs. I'm up in the mix.
I have rarely met people more in a bubble than most folks in large US cities. You may have ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity and (very limited) racial diversity, but the diversity of thought is near zero.
I know you all desperately want to participate in another 1960s civil rights movement, but that battle was won in the...1960s. The vast majority of the remaining issues are socioeconomic. Sorry.
Yes, as someone with university-educated friends and families in large cities, the recent surge of intolerance of more centrist views on the identity-politics left are tearing apart both my friend and family groups.
Not the usual culture war, but my wife and I live with my mother-in-law and after she got addicted to a certain conspiracy youtube scene she's started taking (or almost taking) increasingly drastic actions.
1. (pre-covid) asking us to cancel a family trip to her home country because her youtube channel says the police are just randomly shooting americans for being american
2. Refusing to go outside at all for months post-covid. In the first few weeks she tried to convince us not to even open the windows!
3. Having family members send us HCQ as a "just in case" even though we literally are more cautious about covid than probably 99% of households
4. Trying to convince us that she should take the HCQ as a preventative even though she goes outside the house for maybe an hour a week and takes no significant risk of exposure
Anyways, I think the easy part is avoiding discussions about politics and world events. Ultimately it matters very little to me why she thinks democrats are evil and which boogeyman she thinks secretly controls the world's finances. It becomes problematic when it leads to irrational behavior. I'm concerned what her youtube channel is going to convince her to believe or to do should Joe Biden win the election.
Excellent example. I have mostly the same problem at the opposite end of the political spectrum, and then one extended family member on the other end who is a lot like what you describe. They all are disruptive to family life.
And the media has covered the many revolts/disagreements of activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase and elsewhere. I'm sure people have seen the coverage?
I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s) of my family about science in western society because they believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of society that we can be proud of.
The younger members have grown up taught by many university professors who have pushed postmodernist, power-structure analyses in any different subject areas, to the extent that they find it more important to think of science from the sort of postmodernist cultural theory point of view, than to actually think about the science itself.
I'm more your age but I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking about the technical details of science is not very important to lay people like me.
But the cultural questions involved like who is doing science? for what reasons? under what constraints? what practical applications are there and who will they be applied to? Those potentially matter quite a bit to me.
Sounds like your family are attempting to be active and well-informed and have chosen to become informed in a part of the domain where they can have useful opinions, rather than a part where they can't.
> I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking about the technical details of science is not very important to lay people like me.
It's not just the "technical details". It's the entire scientific outlook and scientific method! We all agree that building the fair and healthy societies that we want is a very hard task. So when we have hard tasks to do, we don't want to turn away from a scientific/engineering mentality, quite the opposite!
For example, we see that we have a lot of unfairness in society that we want to fix. Perhaps studying game theory and mathematical economics would allow you to contribute to human efforts to create incentive structures and legislation that will promote fairness. Presumably studying statistics and decision theory will help understand the challenges we face as a society needing to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and complex costs.
But studying these things is HARD; it requires effort over a long time span to climb the mountain. It does NOT help at all if young people are encouraged to mill around at the base of the mountain wittering about power structures and unfairness in academia.
"inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures" is a quite strong and specific (but I'm assuming also a bit of a strawman on your part). But "extremely misaligned incentives and pretty abusive to the foot soldiers in a way that compromises personal integrity" is a fair characterization of a lot of modern academic science. Everything about the way the system is designed incentivizes
Out of curiosity, do you have a STEM PhD? How many millions of dollars in grant money have you raised? How many 100+ citation papers have you published? Are you TT @ an R1 or are you a group lead industry research lab?
I ask because I find that the people who are most excited to defend "academic science" from these sorts of structural criticisms often don't actually have much experience working within the system they are defending. People who actually work in the system know there's plenty to critique.
We should be proud of what academic science has accomplished in the last ~70 years, but not blind to how the extremely poor treatment and high pressure put on grad students and early-career professors warps incentives, creates the conditions for abusive behavior, attracts the wrong sorts of people into management positions, etc.
So in other words, it _hasn't_ invaded your family life. "Some of my family disagrees with my views" is different than "my family life has been upended/invaded".
Did you miss the part where I said "unable to talk to younger members of my family about science"?
Which part of that do you not find particularly significant? You don't think "talking about science" is an important thing for family members to be able do do? You think "science" sounds like a narrow, nerdy sort of conversation that one wouldn't need to have often? You don't think that arguing every time the topic comes up could damage relations with people that I want to get on with? You don't think that us mutually disrespecting each others positions could damage relations? I'm really at a loss for what goes on in your family; do enlighten us.
I feel sure most Americans have the same experience, but perhaps I'm an outlier?